


monochrome

by whitemiists



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Color Blindness, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, actually almost all of karasuno makes little appearances, but yachi has a slightly more prominent part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4314135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitemiists/pseuds/whitemiists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“You know… to me, the sky isn’t blue,” he says, his voice soft like in wonder, as if he’s discovering himself all over again by saying this aloud.</p>
  <p>"I see the world in black and white. And grey, too, I guess. Though some people might say that grey’s just a lighter black. So I don’t know, maybe it’s still just black and white.” His jaw hardens. “But for sure I can’t see blue or orange or purple or yellow.”</p>
</blockquote><p>Hinata sees the world a little different. But that's okay, because Kageyama sees it a little differently, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monochrome

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Черно-белый](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4884631) by [Nataliny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nataliny/pseuds/Nataliny)



> this was a little something i wrote on tumblr when i was struggling with writer's block and just wanted to get _some_ sort of writing done, to work through it. i pulled up a word generator, which gave me the prompt "monochrome" — so i wrote colorblind!hinata.
> 
> i posted it here for a request, though some of you might already have seen it on tumblr :)

“Hey, Natsu?”

The volleyball spins between his palms, stilling in his clenched fingers just as his sister glances over from the swing, and he asks, “What color is this volleyball?”

A finger finds her chin, her face pinching over her big brother’s unexpected pop quiz. “There’s white, and red, and green,” she tells him, proudly uncurling three pudgy fingers. “So that makes  _three_ colors total.”

“Oh.” He stares numbly down at the ball in his grasp, at the white and grey patterns spiraling over the surface, and confesses, “I only see two.”

.

His friends tell him his hair is  _orange,_ apparently a vibrant color that makes him the butt of many jokes. He doesn’t quite understand each one, but he laughs along anyway, because his friends are having a good time and that’s more important than seeing the same colors they do.

“Does Natsu have orange hair, too?” he asks his mother, curious.

She smiles fondly, her fingers threading into his messy locks and raking against his scalp. “She does. That’s how everyone knows you’re brother and sister.”

Hinata mulls that over, his own fingers sliding through his tangled hair again and again before the bathroom mirror. And he realizes, eventually, that for him, it’s different.

He and Natsu are brother and sister because they fight over who gets to bathe first, because she tattles on him when he accidentally destroys her building block creations, because he won’t let her near his video games for fear that she would only break them.

They’re brother and sister because he holds her hand during scary movies, because he takes her to the park and waits for her to get her fill of the jungle gym, because he fixes her tiny pigtails when they’re disheveled by the wind on the walk to school.

It has nothing to do with  _orange._

From that young age, Hinata realizes he sees the world a little different.

.

The view from the top.

Sometimes he wonders whether it’ll matter that he’ll never see it the way other players do. He wonders whether it would dull the moment to not see the brown of the floorboards, the colors of his opponents’ team uniform as they lunged for a receive, the spinning shades of the volleyball as he spiked it cleanly through the air.

The view he would see, Hinata knows, would never be the same view that the Small Giant used to see.

But when that moment finally comes, all he sees is pitch black – the color behind his eyelids, as he puts his trust in his teammate and his hand connects with a volleyball over the net.

“Oi! Why did you close your eyes!” Kageyama barks after, pointing an accusing finger at him.

Hinata doesn’t understand the fuss.

To him, the world is black, or it’s white. He either trusts Kageyama, or he doesn’t. And even if they’re fated rivals, even if he’s sworn to defeat him one day, he’s never been given a reason not to trust Kageyama.

People might call him simple, might tell him the world is more grey than it is black or white. But this is how things have always been for Hinata.

“Is it usually possible to trust someone one-hundred percent like that?” Kageyama demands, just barely restraining his fists from clubbing him over the head.

But Hinata retaliates, spits back, tells him, “It’s ‘cause I don’t know any other way to do it!”

.

(Just once he can’t resist. He squints through his eyelids, peeks at the view from the top of the net. And,  _oh,_ even in shades of black and white, it’s every bit as majestic as he’d always dreamed it would be).

.

He likes Karasuno’s uniform.

It’s a stark black, from bottom to top, and he likes that he sees it the way every other student does. The volleyball club suppresses snickers behind their palms at Nishinoya’s words, but silently Hinata agrees; Karasuno’s uniform is so,  _so_ cool.

The team uniforms, even, come in colors of black and orange.

“Like my hair!” Hinata exclaims, eyes as wide and ecstatic as his smile, clutching his jersey to his chest. Daichi chuckles, pets his hair affectionately, and Hinata eagerly holds his jersey against his hair front of the bathroom mirror that night, trying to discern whether they’re the same shade.

This, he decides gleefully, is proof that he’s always been fated to end up at Karasuno.

.

Kageyama starts to notice things first.

Hinata’s always been a bit of a flustered mess – he can’t even count the number of times he’d accidentally put on Tanaka’s pants in a fit of nerves – so it takes longer than it might have for things to start falling out of place. But Kageyama’s always been intuitive, as Hinata’s starting to learn, and he notices things first.

“That’s  _my_ headband,” he snaps, huffily snatching it out of Hinata’s hand. “Mine is blue and yours is red. How the hell do you mix that up!”

Hinata only sticks out his tongue and stocks away, crabbily taking his headband with him.

“Bring me the volleyball pump, would you?” Daichi requests one afternoon, just before practice is set to begin. “The new purple one, please. The old one has been acting up.”

Kageyama’s in the storage room when he nervously pokes his head in, picking out the perfect volleyball with great care from the cart, and they throw quick glares at one another before Hinata begins his search. He finds the first pump, and then the second, and he can’t tell the difference at all.

Panic seizes him. Kageyama’s still in the room, still throwing him shifty, irritated looks by the volleyball cart, so his genius light bulb idea to test the pumps crumbles before his eyes.

Instead, he scratches the back of his head. “Uhh, I can’t find the new pump? Is it even  _in_ here?”

“It’s literally  _right here,_ stupid!” Kageyama barks, and plucks it off the shelf. “How do you not even see–”

“Thanks!” He snatches it from his grip, taking time to stick out his tongue before bolting out the storage room, and misses the way Kageyama’s curious eyes follow him all the way across the court.

“What is your  _problem?”_ he asks, on the walk home, his lips slanted.

But Hinata scrunches his nose, splitting at the fork in the road, and tells him, “None of your business, Crabby-yama.”

.

Yachi has bright, yellow hair.

Hinata only knows because he overhears Sugawara complimenting her on it, which sends her into a flustered spiral of tiny squeaks and “not at all!”s.

Yachi is also possibly the smartest girl in their year, and Hinata only knows after their very first study session, that one lunch break when Tsukishima had decided to be a jerk.

“Wow, your notes are so organized!” he exclaims, marveling at the neat handwriting and the structured format. Yachi rambles off into a tirade about themes and layouts and all sorts of things Hinata doesn’t really follow, but he can’t help but grin because she just seems so happy when she speaks of her mother.

“Oi, ‘Small Giant who won’t be able to go to Tokyo,’” Kageyama flatly interrupts them. “Copy this down already.” Hinata grumbles complaints under his breath at being cut off, but he’s ignored with a roll of Kageyama’s eyes. “Here,” he tells him. “The part highlighted in pink.”

Hinata falters, spinning his pencil round and round round between his fingers, stalling for time as he squints and tries his best to tell one color from the next. They’re all varying shades of grey, some lighter or bolder than others – but still grey.

Kageyama notices, his face crumpling in his confusion, the question in his eyes translating well in the slant of his mouth. But Hinata won’t meet his gaze, staring intently at the paper and ignoring the whistling in his ears.

Suddenly the setter drops his finger to the paper, running it along the bottom of the page. “Copy this part,” he tells him gruffly.

Hinata stares at him with widening eyes, his mouth equally round, but their gazes don’t meet. There’s a crease between Kageyama’s eyebrows, giving form to his perplexity, but the moment passes without another word said between them.

.

Yachi finds them in the hall the next day, and shoves identical packets of papers in their hands.

“I-I copied some notes for you two!” she explains, twisting the hem of her shirt around her finger. She’s still nervous around the volleyball club, for one reason or another. “Organized notes are a huge boost, you know. S-So I photocopied my notes and color coded all the sections to help you study!”

Hinata stares down at his notes, at the white and black and grey all over the page, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it’s all a waste.

“Wow, Yachi!” he exclaims, shaking one of her hands vigorously in his own. “Thanks so much! I’ll ace my next test  _for sure._ You’re the best!”

Kageyama mumbles similar words of gratitude, dipping into an awkward bow that doesn’t much go past his head.

When Yachi stumbles away, shyly returning Hinata’s enthusiastic wave, he finally notices the setter staring at him with a hard, searching look.

Instantly, he’s on the defense. Arms folded across his chest, he demands, “ _What?”_

Kageyama shakes his head, sighs, “Nothing.”

But that intensity in his gaze doesn’t dissipate; if anything, it only grows more blatant when his eyes flit towards the notes in Hinata’s firm grasp, and for one, heart-stopping moment, he wonders whether the setter  _knows._

But Kageyama doesn’t ask.

.

Hinata tells him after the Spring High.

They’re together by the taps, washing up after the game. Kageyama has his head ducked under the running water, but Hinata leans against the stone and stares at the expansive sky, holding up his arm and spreading his fingers above him, to peek through the cracks.

A crow, dark as night, cuts across the vastness, and Hinata thinks of how far he and Kageyama have come, how Kageyama had been the first one he’d thought to embrace in the heat of victory. So he tells him.

“You know… to me, the sky isn’t blue,” he says, his voice soft like in wonder, as if he’s discovering himself all over again by saying this aloud.

Kageyama looks over, twisting off the tap and draping a towel around his neck. He frowns. “Well, yeah. The sun’s setting, so it’s more purple.”

Hinata shakes his head, never tearing his eyes away from the spaces between his fingers. “No, I mean… it’s never been blue for me. My hair’s not orange to me either. Our volleyball pump’s not purple. And Yachi’s hair isn’t yellow.”

The frown deepens. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I see the world in black and white.” He mulls that over, then corrects himself, “And grey, too, I guess. Though some people might say that grey’s just a lighter black. So I don’t know, maybe it’s still just black and white.” His jaw hardens. “But for sure I can’t see blue or orange or purple or yellow.”

Kageyama leans on the taps beside him, dabbing at his dripping face but not saying a word.

Hinata grins. “It’s not bad, though. But sometimes I wish… I could see the color of the sky, you know?”

“What color is it, to you?” Kageyama asks, curling his toes on the grass.

“A light grey.”

“Then it’s light grey.” He shrugs. “If that’s how you see it, then that’s how it is. Isn’t that right?”

His grin widens, and he purposely bumps their shoulders together. “Yeah.”

.

He tries to explain it once: the world, as he sees it.

“It’s like… just two colors,” he articulates, wildly waving about the chopsticks in his hand. Kageyama glances up from his lunch, though he doesn’t stop shoveling food into his mouth. “Everything is either black, or it’s white.”

Kageyama makes some vague humming noise in return, downing his strawberry milk with a violent suck on his straw.

“Normally, I’ve learned, the good stuff is black, and the bad stuff is white.”

“Stupid. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

He shakes his head furiously, concentrating hard on how best to explain judging by the wrinkles across his forehead. “Well, the Karasuno uniform is black. And the first time I ever hit one of your tosses in a match, everything was black. And, uh, y-your hair is…” He falters, heat creeping into his cheeks, especially when Kageyama shoots him a questioning look. He hurries on to add, his arms flailing wildly, “Well, Daichi-san’s hair is black!  _Oh,_ that’s not to say Sugawara-san’s hair is a bad thing! But, well, Tsukishima’s hair is white and he’s  _definitely_ a grouchy, bad thing. So maybe the idea isn’t  _perfect,_  b-but–”

“The Seijou uniform is white,” Kageyama adds helpfully.

Hinata pounds a fist against the roof tile. “Exactly, exactly! See? The world’s pretty crystal clear.”

Content with himself, he shuffles more of his mother’s cooking into his mouth, and they sit in silence that’s become common for them since reaching their second year. He’s surprised at himself, that he could befriend the boy who had once been his fated rival.

“Hey, Kageyama,” he muses, chopsticks placed against his mouth. “You know, I thought you used to be on the white side.”

He thinks of that middle school loss, of declaring rivalry against the King of the Court, who stood bathed in the white light of the sunset behind him – like an untouchable God of volleyball.

Things are different now. Now they stand on the same side of the court, dressed in the same uniform, and he’ll always be there to hit Kageyama’s toss.

“But I was wrong,” he proclaims, and beams. “You’re definitely on the black side!”

Kageyama gruffly shoves a rice ball in his face.

.

“Kageyama, are your eyes beautiful?”

He splutters, almost tripping over his own feet, and catches himself quickly enough to shoot him an incredulous, horrified look.  _“What?”_

“W-Well, the girls in our year are always talking about them, you know?” he mumbles defensively, rubbing his arm in discomfort. “They always say they like your eyes ‘cause they’re really, really beautiful. So… are they?”

Kageyama’s cheeks have darkened a tint. Hinata thinks he must be blushing. It’s endearing even without the color red he’s been told often accompanies a blush.

“I-I don’t  _know,_ stupid,” he snaps crabbily, clearly embarrassed as he rubs the back of his head. “They’re… just blue.”

 _Just blue._ Like the color of the sky he’s always wanted to see. Now there’s something he wishes to see even more.

But he doesn’t need color after all, for the sun gets caught in Kageyama’s eyes when they part ways, throwing flecks of light across the pretty palette of grey.

 _Ahh,_ Hinata thinks, enchanted. They  _are_ beautiful.

.

“Hey,” Kageyama says gruffly, stopping him right in the middle of the crowded hall, and can’t seem to stop staring at his fidgety feet. “Your eyes… they’re pretty nice, too.”

Hinata registers shock for a moment, jaw slacking. But then his nose scrunches. “I heard they’re just  _brown.”_

Kageyama scowls. “Brown’s a nice color,” he hisses, offended on his behalf.  _“Warm.”_

Hinata stares at him unblinkingly, even as he awkwardly turns tail and stomps off towards his classroom, grumbling about math class under his breath.

Brown, he decides, feeling something hot and foreign in his stomach, is definitely warm.

.

Yachi brings in a tin of lollipops one practice. “Help yourself!” she urges them, smiling cheerily.

“Oh, boy!” Hinata whoops, racing over without a moment to spare. “Thanks, Yachi!”

He digs his hand into the tin before anyone else, concentrating hard as he plays the lottery with the sweets, and digs out one from the very bottom of the can. A firm hand suddenly grips his wrist, but Kageyama’s fingers are gentle as he plucks the lollipop from his grasp.

“Dumbass,” he murmurs, shuffling in close so no one would hear. “You just picked out the purple one. You  _hate_ grape.”

He doesn’t move away as he reaches into the tin himself, and Hinata follows a bead of sweat that trails down his Adam’s apple, until it collects just above his clavicle.

“Here,” he offers, and presses another into Hinata’s palm. “Pear. It’s your favorite.”

He keeps the grape for himself, ripping off the package and sticking the candy between his lips. His tongue coils around it, as he absentmindedly enjoys the tangy flavor, and Hinata furiously focuses on his own so he has reason to glance away.

Brown might be warmth, but purple–

Purple is scorching lava in his veins.

.

In third year he hopes and hopes and  _hopes_ for a part in his class play, but instead he’s booted to be part of the crew. All is not lost, however, because he gets to go out and buy paints with his sister, and smile at that awe on her face over discovering the crafts store for the very first time.

He sucks up his pride, and asks Kageyama for a favor.

“Can you stay behind after school with me?” he mumbles, looking off to the side. “They stuck me with the backgrounds, and the paints are all labeled, but I need someone there to be sure I don’t mess up.”

Surprisingly Kageyama shrugs. He doesn’t even snap at him like Hinata had initially expected, to lecture him for accepting such an unreasonable request in the first place.

“Sure,” he agrees easily. “Practice is already on hold until the cultural festival is over anyway.”

And so the two boys find themselves alone in the classroom after hours, when the school’s quiet and deserted and they feel like they’re the only ones in the world.

Kageyama sits in a chair, quietly slurps his milk, and just  _watches._ It makes Hinata’s face burn, as he carefully paints sets on the ground before him, so very aware of his gaze.

“Hey, Kageyama?” he murmurs, to make conversation, rolling up his sleeves even further. “Why’d you agree to help so quickly? And without yelling?”

He cocks his head, casually crossing one leg over the other. “Just because there’s something different about you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to do the things everyone else does,” he explains, shrugging one shoulder.

Hinata bites away a wobbly smile.

.

Eventually Kageyama abandons his chair, joining Hinata on the floor and even painting a few sections himself some days.

 _“Stu-pid,”_  he huffs, when Hinata absentmindedly wipes his cheek with the back of his hand. “You just got paint all  _over_ your face!”

He doesn’t have a handkerchief, but he finds a headband in his pocket that he often uses for practice, and Hinata giggles as he furiously wipes off the streak of color across his cheek.

“Kageyama,  _gross!”_ he whines, still overcome by fits of laughter. “Don’t use your sweaty headband on my  _face!”_

“I own a washing machine,” he snaps, refusing to relent until every last drop of paint has been rubbed off. He needs to slide in close to do so, cupping Hinata’s chin to steady them both, but doesn’t seem to notice.

Hinata watches his eyes affectionately. They’re a tad darker today, maybe because the sun has a little trouble finding them in a classroom, and they’re as hard and intense as he’s grown accustomed to. In a thoughtless move, he swipes his bangs aside for a closer look.

“Hinata, you bastard! You just got paint in my hair!”

Hinata wails as he’s tackled, as Kageyama purposely dips his hand in paint and then threads his fingers through orange locks. Hinata kicks up a fuss, whining about an unfair advantage with his hips trapped snugly between sturdy thighs. But Kageyama is merciless.

By the time he relents, Hinata’s hair feels cakey and covered in goo. He scoffs, “What you did was way worse!”

“Because this is how you repay me when I do you a favor?” Kageyama grumbles back, and doesn’t seem to notice that he has yet to unpin the boy caged beneath him.

Hinata beats on his chest, getting paint on his shirt, but they’re past the point of caring. “ _God,_ it was an honest mistake. I just wanted to see your face better!”

“F-For  _what?_  To gouge out my eyes or something?”

“No, stupid!” he hollers back, lurching against him. “Because it’s a  _nice face!”_

Kageyama gapes down at him for that, and Hinata can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed when he’s already so frustrated. “Get off me,” he demands instead, and the setter allows himself to be lightly shoved away.

They’re both complete messes, splotches of paint marring small patches of their bodies in some way. Hinata feels his paint-ridden hair between his fingers and imagines walking home this way.

Finally, Kageyama asks, in a low voice, “How long have you been thinking this way?”

“That you have a nice face or that I want to see it more?” he questions in return, crawling back to the backgrounds. They’ll get no more work done today, he knows, not when they’re so keyed up. He starts packing things away.

“Both, I guess?” Kageyama requests, and his lips arch into a deep frown.

Hinata splays his arms. “I don’t know. If someone has a nice face I guess you notice from day one. Or pretty darn close.”

“Oh.”

He has nothing to say to that, so he wordlessly joins Hinata in cleaning up. His headband is nowhere near big or durable enough to clean up the messes they’ve made on each other, so they’re forced to walk home as human art projects.

Hinata doesn’t look at him until that very last moment, when they split at the intersection, because he just can’t help but ask, “Hey, Kageyama? What paint colors are on us?”

Though visibly surprised, he answers, “Orange on me. Blue on you.”

The colors he associates with both of them.

For the first time, as he pedals home alone, Hinata allows himself to blush.

.

Hinata sees the world a little different.

To him, the world is black, or it’s white.

He either trusts Kageyama, or he doesn’t. And even if they’re fated rivals, even if he’s sworn to defeat him one day, he’s never been given a reason not to trust Kageyama.

But it’s more than that, he realizes that night, tucked away in bed and watching shadows dance on the ceiling.

He either likes Kageyama, or he doesn’t. And even if they bicker, even if it wouldn’t make sense in any sort of world, it’s an inarguable fact that he likes Kageyama a lot.

Maybe even loves. Maybe he’s even  _in love._

He falls asleep thinking of black and white and brown and purple and orange and blue.

.

As it turns out, Kageyama sees the world a little different, too.

“I either like you or I don’t,” he says gruffly, bright and early in the morning on the Hinatas’ porch. “And I do.”

He pointedly looks away, and Hinata drops his hair brush in his shock.

.

They walk to school shyly holding hands. They walk home holding hands a little more firmly. They sneak glances in the club room. They bicker through their first date but love every second of it.

It’s all crystal clear, as he’s always known the world to be.

But months from now their lips finally touch, and for the first time the black and white and grey all blend together, to create a world Hinata has never seen before.


End file.
